1392 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Nov. 15 



and continue across ihe country over cities and other obstacles re- 

 quiring the aviator to go high into the air. The unreliability of 

 the motor is what he fears. 



Please notice in the above, he only says he will 

 not just hO'-lv " trust any motor he has ever built 

 or seen;" or, in other words, at the present stage 

 of proceedings it would be exceedingly unwise to 

 riy over any but the most favorable territory on 

 account of the possibility of accidents. Should 

 any thing happen to the motor, we have found 

 by repeated tests that a safe landing has usually 

 been made over any farming territory; and a ma- 

 chine will alight easily and snfely on any sort of 

 faim crops without much risk of harm, with the 

 stout runners I have described, gliding along on 

 the surface of the ground without much risk of 

 damage to the machine. 



Uf course, many more experiments will have 

 to be made while the machine goes through an 

 evolution something similar to that of the auto- 

 mobile. 



I noticed this morning the statement made in 

 the morning papers that Wilbur Wright said a fly- 

 ing-machine need not cost more than $300 when 

 a considerable number of them are made at a 

 time with adequate machinery. I think a(.r could 

 easily make such a machine for less than $100, 

 aside from the cost of the engine, provided fifty 

 or a hundred are built at a time. Whoever owns 

 the patent, will, as a matter of course, need a pret- 

 ty good profit in order to recompense him for 

 what he has invested in the patent, and also for 

 the investment in the necessary factory and equip- 

 ment for building flying-machines. 



SOMETHING ABOUT ELECTRICITY AND THE PROG- 

 RESS IT HAS MADE IN THE LAST FIFTY YEARS. 



Just a few days ago my life was brightened by 

 meeting an old schoolmate whom I had not seen 

 for toward fifty years. When we were boys a 

 dozen years old we were both greatly taken up 

 with chemistry and electricity. A kind teacher 

 gave me a book entitled " Conversations on 

 Chemistry," and my schoolmate, Corwin Purdy, 

 got out of some old garret a book called " Com- 

 stock's Chemistry;" and didn't we two boys have 

 fun with our chemicals! We made gunpowder 

 and fulminating powder, and finally hydrogen 

 gas with which we filled soap bubbles, but they 

 went up so rapidly that we hardly had a chance 

 to touch a match to them. Finally we mixed 

 common air with the gas so as to make an explo- 

 sive, and this, also, made them go enough slower 

 so we could catch them with a lighted match. 

 When he made a new discovery he would run 

 across the valley over to our house on the hill and 

 tell me to "come quick" and see his new inven- 

 tion. In the same way I used to run for him to 

 come over to our house. When we got on to 

 electricity the matter was rather deep for us. The 

 science was then in its infancy. I made a gal- 

 vanic battery; but it did not work — that is, it did 

 not produce an electric shock as I expected it 

 would. He tried it on another plan, making a 

 "galvanic pile" of sheets of zinc, copper, and 

 cloth. The cloth was moistened with a weak 

 acid; and, oh how delighted we were when it not 

 only gave a faint shock, but produced sparks that 

 were plainly visible after dark! When I went 

 home I wound some copper wire around a little 



rod of iron and hitched my wires to my battery; 

 and, lo and behold! it didvioxV.. The iron pick- 

 ed up nails and let them drop; and after I had 

 spent all of my hoarded pennies for wire I made 

 a little telegraph apparatus. 



When I was about fourteen, however, my 

 father moved away from Mogadore, Summit Co., 

 Ohio, and I lost sight of my friend Corwin. 

 When I came to Medina I kept on with my elec- 

 trical experiments, and soon had a revolving mag- 

 net exactly on the principle of the electric motors 

 of to-day. I also succeeded in exploding hydro- 

 gen gas with electricity, thus rudely outlining 

 the gas-engines that run automobiles at the pres- 

 ent time. When I got my little electric motor 

 so it would run a miniature home-made sawmill 

 I started out " giving lectures " around at country 

 schoolhouses; and my old friend W. P. Root, 

 who is taking down these notes for me, remem- 

 bers coming, with his father and older brothers, 

 to one of my lectures at Sharon Center, Medina 

 Co. I think that, in that boyish lecture, I pre- 

 dicted that electricity would some time supersede 

 steam as a motive power for travel. I do not 

 know but I told them that steam might be super- 

 seded in four or five years. My only mistake 

 was in not multiplying my figures by ten, and 

 saying forty or fifty years. Yes, it may take 

 another fifty years yet, to fulfill fully my predic- 

 tion. At that time of my life I was reading the 

 Scientfic American., and ransacking the world as 

 well as I could for all the books on electricity. 

 It was not very difficult, as there were only a few 

 at that time. 



Now, what prompted this paper was the sight 

 of my old friend Purdy, transformed from a 

 black-eyed, black-haired youngster to a white- 

 haired and white-bearded man of almost seventy. 

 Friend Purdy is still not only alive, but on the 

 alert to know the new things that God is reveal- 

 ing to us through chemistry and electricity. 

 Fifty years ago a galvanic battery, to do any sort 

 of work, even in the way of experiments, cost 

 four or five dollars, and it would run for only a 

 few hours, and then the zinc plates had to be 

 washed off and a new solution prepared. Now 

 we have batteries of considerable strength that 

 cost us only a few cents, and yet they will not 

 only run for months but even for years. The 

 electric clock in our bedroom has been running 

 by batteries that are now over a year old, and I 

 do not know how much longer they will last. 

 After using a set of batteries in my automobile 

 for several months until they were so far run 

 down that they did not give good service, I found 

 one of the exhausted cells would still ring a little 

 doorbell very well; and just to test it I left the 

 bell ringing in my automobile-house. I think 

 that, after it had been running for two days, and 

 was still making a faint jingle, somebody who 

 slept upstairs in our house several rods away was 

 found poking around in my automobile-house. 

 When I came up to question the intruder he said 

 he was trying to see if he could not stop that 

 " everlasting clatter" that kept them awake nights; 

 and I believe this run-down battery kept that lit- 

 tle doorbell going for something like three whole 

 days and nights. 



By the way, in our last issue I spoke about 

 battery-testers; and one of these cheap doorbells 

 makes a very good battery-tester except that it is 



